Thursday, January 21, 2010

Barbara Forrest Says ID is Creationism

In a new paper entitled "The Religious Essence of Intelligent Design," Barbara Forrest indicates IDs are confused about their own theory:

Despite the protestations of its proponents, “intelligent design theory” (ID) is not science but creationism, making it in its essence a supernaturalist religious belief. This fact has been established conclusively for the legal record in Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District (2005) and for the public by a decade of scholarship, much of which helped to secure the Kitzmiller plaintiffs’ victory in this first legal case involving ID. Moreover, ID is not merely a religious belief but, more specifically, a narrow form of sectarian Christianity, as specified by its own proponents. The nature of ID as a creationist, therefore religious, movement has been revealed not only by its critics, but also, most importantly, by its proponents. The explication of ID by its critics as creationism, and therefore religion, reflects the way the movement views itself.

In other words, proponents argue that ID is not creationism and that it is creationism. So which is it? Unfortunately Forrest seems to be preferring simplistic answers and working hard at avoiding any substance. And that the paper appears in the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology is an unfortunate sign of evolution's impact on scientific culture. I'm still waiting for her to explain the methodological naturalism mandate.

Really? I'm sorry, I must have missed the articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals which support the key tennets of Intelligent Design.

We cannot engage ID on a scientific level because it is not a scientific theory. It makes no testable predecitions, it explains any possible, conceivable evidence and flat out violates key principles of science - such as methodological naturalism.

In other words, whether or not it's Creationism, it sure isn't science.

Well I would very much like to examine it. But we can't because it doesn't actually make any testable predictions.

It is, scientifically, untestable.

All ID does is take biological mysteries and claim that we haven't solved these puzzles yet because they are evidence for supernatural intervention - God did it.

Then, inevitably, science solves the mystery (and guess what, the cause is always natural, not supernatural), and ID-ers simply back away and claim that the next mystery is evidence of supernatural intervention.